Next Day of the Condor

They led him out of the CIA’s secret insane asylum as the sun set over autumn’s forest there in Maine.

Brian and Doug walked on either side of him, Brian a half-step back on the right, the package’s strong side, because even when there’ll be no problem, it pays to be prepared beyond a government salary you can only collect if you’re still alive.

Brian and Doug seemed pleasant. Younger, of course, with functional yet fashionable short hair. Doug sported stubble that tomorrow could let him blend into Kabul with little more than a shemagh head wrap and minor clothing adjustments from the American mall apparel he wore today. Brian and Doug introduced themselves to the package at the Maine castle’s front security desk. He hoped their mission was to take him where they said he was supposed to go and not to some deserted ditch in the woods.

Two sets of footsteps walked behind him and his escorts, but in what passes for our reality, he could only hear the walker with the clunky shoes. The soundless steps made more powerful cosmic vibrations.

The clunky shoes belonged to Dr. Quinton, who’d succeeded the murdered Dr. Friedman and mandated Performance Protocols to replace the patient-centric approach of his predecessor, policies that hadn’t gotten that psychiatrist ice picked through his ear, but why not use that tragic opportunity to institute a new approach of accountability?

After all, you can’t be wrong if you’ve got the right numbers.

The soundless steps are the scruffy sneakers footfalls of blonde nurse Vicki.

She wore electric red lipstick.

And her wedding band linked to her high school sweetheart who like every day for the last eight years lay in a Bangor Veterans Home bed tubed & cabled to beeping machines tracking the flatline of his brain waves and his heart that refused to surrender.

The beating of that heart haunts the soft steps of she who no one really knows.

Except for the silver-haired man walking ahead of her from this secret castle.

And he’s nuts, so…

The dimming of the day activates sensors in the castle’s walled parking lot where these five public servants emerge. Brian and Doug steer the parade toward a “van camper,” gray metal and tinted black glass side windows, small enough to parallel park, big enough for “road living” behind two cushioned chairs facing the sloped windshield. Utah license plates lied with their implication of not a government ride.

Doug said: “October used to be colder.”

Brian eyed the package’s scruffy black leather jacket. Seems like a nice enough guy, moves better than his silver hair might make you think.

Doug slid open the van’s side rear door with a whirring rumble. Lights came on in the rear interior with built-in beds on each side of a narrow aisle.

Brian said: “How we going to do this?”

Dr. Quinton took a step—

Stopped by Nurse Vicki, who thrust one hand at the psychiatrist’s chest and used her other to pluck the purse-like black medical case from his grasp.

“Protocols dictate—”

“This is still America,” said Vicki. “No dictators.”

Dr. Quinton blinked but she was beyond that, standing in front of the package with the cobalt blue eyes, looking straight at him as she said: “Are you ready?”

“Does that matter?”

Her ruby smile said yes, said no.

He spoke to both her and the two soft clothes soldiers: “Where do you want me?”

“Like she said,” answered Doug, “it’s a free country. Pick either bed.”

The package chose the slab on the shotgun seat’s side of the van because it was less likely to catch a bullet crashing through the windshield to take out the driver.

Nurse Vicki entered the van behind him.

Said: “You need to take your jacket off.”

“Might be more comfortable to stay that way,” called Brian as he climbed behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver’s door shut.

The black leather jacket had been his before, but now the inner pocket over his heart held a laboratory-aged wallet with never-used I.D.’s and credit cards. Felt sad to take off his old friend the black leather jacket. Felt good to shed its weight of new lies.

He wore a long-sleeved, suitable for an office blue shirt over black long-sleeved, thermal underwear suitable for the autumn forest. Fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Sensed the nurse resisting helping him pull off the thermal underwear.

He sat on the bed. Naked from the waist up. Shivered, maybe from the evening chill, maybe from the proximity of a red-lipped younger woman.

Who couldn’t help herself, cared about who she was and was a nurse, stared at his scars but there was nothing she could do for them now, for him, she was not that able.

Or free.

She unzipped the medical bag that opened like the jaws of a trap: one side held hypodermic needles, alcohol and swabs, the other side held pill bottles.

“You already took your final dose of meds back in the ward,” she said.

“I took what they gave me. Hope that’s not final”.

Crimson lips curled in a smile. Tears shimmered her green eyes.

He said: “I’m glad it’s you giving me the needle.”

“’Had to be,” she whispered.

Swabbed his bare left shoulder.

Slid the needle into his flesh.

Pushed the plunger.

Said: “Not long now.”

He dressed, stood to tuck his shirts into his black jeans.

Nurse Vicki turned down the blanket on the rack he’d chosen.

“Might want to keep your shoes on,” said Doug from outside the van.

The package stretched out on his back, pillow under his head.

“Just a tip,” said Doug. “Straps first is more comfortable.”

Vicki—made it through night school working as a grocery checker and sitting vigil beside a hospital bed where the patient never stirred—Vicki fastened Safety Straps across the prone man, tucked the blanket over him to his chin, knew he could have been her father, knew she could have made him one, knew that wasn’t—isn’t—what mattered or what decided what was never going to be more than stolen heartbeats of rebellion and escape, comfort and yearning, the fever of beasts.

Let it go. Let it go.

“Do you remember the new name you picked?” she asked him. “Not Condor.”

“How can I not be who I am?”

“That’s part of the deal to get you out of here. Back to the real world.”

“So that’s where I’m going.” His smile was sly.

“So they tell me.” Her smile was honest. “Who are you, Condor?”

“Vin.”

“V for Vicki,” she said, like it was nothing.

“Yes,” he lied to let her have everything he could give.

She pressed her crimson lips to his mouth: Last kiss.

Floated out of the van, a blur of white, the night spinning as Doug whirred the side door closed, climbed into the shotgun seat, slammed his door thunk.

Condor, Vin, whoever he was dropped into a black hole.

Drugged sleep. Flashes of sight, of sound, dreams in a heartbeat rhythm.

…white stripes flick through a night road’s headlights…

…Springsteen guitars State Trooper…

…beeping machines web a hollow Marine to a hospital bed…

…naked thighs straining yes yes yes…

…snap-clack of a chambering .45…

…red lips…

…Arab Spring crowds: “Lib-er-te! Lib-er-te!”…

…footsteps behind you on Paris cobblestones…

…the mailman clings to his pouch…

…drone’s view of a rushing closer city square…

…plopped on a closet toilet, no pants, some guy saying, “OK, here you go”…

…walk into the alley, a friend waves you forward…

JOLT. Awake. He felt himself…awake. Sunlight through black glass windows.

Blink and you’re flat on your back on a bed in a van. That’s stopped.

Coffee, that wondrous rich aroma.

“OK, man,” said…Doug, his name is Doug. “Straps are off. Sit up, have a cup of the good stuff from inside.”

Inside where? Where am I?

He sipped coffee cut with milk from a paper cup logoed: ‘bucks!

“You gotta go again?” said Brian from the behind the wheel of the parked van. “We took you in the middle of the night, but…Hey, you’re a guy that age and your med’ reports say—score, by the way! The daily use pill with the TV commercial of the man and woman sitting in side by side bathtubs.”

“Let’s get you together before we meet the world,” said Doug.

The Special Ops guys let him cram himself into the closet bathroom.

“Remember,” Doug said through the closed bathroom door: “Your name is Vin.”

After he flushed the van toilet—Such a weird concept! — Doug met him in the cramped aisle between the beds. Passed him a paper cup of pills to help him forget what he wasn’t supposed to remember and act like he believed what other people saw.

A plastic bag labeled “For Our Forgetful Guests!” that had been repurposed from a Los Angeles hotel waited beside the metal sink. The bag held a disposable toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste trademarked with a notorious TV cartoon squirrel.

“We figured,” said Doug, “feel fresh for a fresh start.”

Brian called out from behind the van’s steering wheel: “Don’t be impressed, he’s had the whole ride here to think of that one.”

Mouthful of minty toothpaste.

The sink faucet worked—Amazing! He rinsed, spit.

Raised his eyes to the metal plate polished to reflect like a mirror.

Saw a silver-haired, craggy & scarred faced, blue-eyed man staring back at him.

Whispered: “Your name is Vin.”

Thought: “Condor.”

Radio Voice from the van’s dashboard:

“—is it for this edition of Rush Hour Rundown on New Jersey Public Radio, but throughout the day, stories we’ll be following include attempts to bring Occupy Wall Street movements to middle America, life after Gadhafi in war-torn Libya, the last days of that Ohio zookeeper who freed his wild animals and then killed himself, and the billionaire brothers who’ve bought a chunk of America’s politics, plus the latest actor to play Superman talks about his divorce from the, um, generously proportioned socialite hired by reality TV to play someone like herself, and one of our only two surviving Beatles is getting married — again. Finally, remember: today we’re supposed to be terrified. Go forth in fear.”

WHAT?

“Coming up, the third in our six-part series on how climate change—”

Click, off went the radio as Brian turned: “Did you say something?”

Doug held out the black leather jacket to Vin, said: “You ready to go?”

Then slid open the van’s rear compartment side door and with the nostalgia of a paratrooper, hopped out into the rush of cool gray sunshine.

The silver-haired man put on his black leather jacket.

Stepped out into the light.

I’m in a parking lot.

Low gray sky, cool sun glistening on rows of parked cars surrounding a tan cement, crouched dragon building. Waves of sound whooshing past.

Slouching from the dragon building came a trio of zombies.

“No fucking way!” muttered Vin, muttered Condor.

Zombies, but their make-up and costumes were so lame you could tell who they weren’t.

“Happy Halloween,” said Brian as he posted beside Vin.

The zombies climbed into a five-year-old car with New Jersey license plates.

Doug said: “Today, everybody else is in costume.”

His partner shook his head: “Don’t be impressed. He’s had the whole ride to think of that one, too.”

“Go figure,” said Doug. “It’s fucking 2011 and everywhere you look, zombies.”

“If we’ve got zombies,” said Condor, said Vin, “do you got guns?”

Call it a pause in the cool morning air.

Then Doug answered: “We’re fully sanctioned.”

Condor shrugged. “As long as what you’re full of is sanction.”

The Escort Operatives stared at him with eyes that were stone canyons.

“You expecting trouble?” said Brian.

“Always. Never.” Condor shook his head. “My meds are supposed to suffocate expectations.”

“You just need some breakfast,” said Brian. “Stand here a minute, get your land legs under you, get your breath, then we’ll get something to eat.”

“Want to do T’ai chi?” Doug gestured to a white gazebo in the corner of the parking lot. “Get your Form on?”

“That’s not low-profile,” said Vin, said Condor. “Citizens might think I’m weird.”

“Really,” said Brain. “That’s what would make you seem weird?”

“Remember, Vin,” said Doug: “We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are. You know that’s the heart and hard of any Op’, so play it cool. Low key. Absolutely normal.”

“Normal has been a problem.”

“You’re past that now,” said Brian. “Remember?”

“Meanwhile,” said Doug, “welcome to the Nick Logar Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.”

“Monday morning, Halloween, 2011,” said Brian. “Zero-nine-three three.”

Doug frowned. “Who was Nick Logar?”

“Who cares?” said Brian.

Condor surprised them: “Poet. Black & white movies days, tough times, people working hard to just hold on, rich guys on top even after the stock market crash, bad guys savaging the world. Kind of quirky getting a rest stop named after Nick Logar. Rebel politics, road crazy. But nobody likes to talk about that, just his Congressional Medal of Honor and Pulitzer Prize for poetry no one reads, except for that famous one that doesn’t flap the flag like—God, it feels good to just talk!”

“And look at you!” said Doug. “Got a lot to say and up on literature and shit.”

“My first spy job was to know things like that.”

Brian shrugged. “My first was a take-out in Tehran. We’re not talking dinner.”

“Let’s talk breakfast,” said Doug.

“Fuck talking,” said Brian. “Let’s eat.”

The silver-haired man brushed his hands down the front of his black leather jacket, amateurishly revealing worry over not finding a gun hidden under there and thus implying that years of confinement had succeeded in making him not Condor but Vin.

“Chill,” said Brian. “Everything’s normal and OK. Just look.”

Condor didn’t tell his Escort Operative that normal and OK are not the same.

But he did look.

The parked gray van faced a chain link fence that made the north boundary of the rest stop. Beyond the fence, a yellowed marsh filled the median between Northbound and Southbound lanes of the Turnpike. The van sat closer to the Southbound lane, and that route’s exit into the rest stop made a sloping hill behind the white gazebo.

The van’s rear bumper faced four rows of cars parked in white striped spaces on the side of the rest stop’s crouching dragon “facility” building, tan cement walls and a New Mexico meets Hong Kong green roof. The facility sat on a raised knoll to stay above rainwater runoff. Glass doors front & centered the facility, a dragon’s face where a protruding tongue of concrete steps led down to the pavement between a mustache of two sloped ramps. The glass doors reflected the nearly full front parking lot.

People. Lots and lots of people.

A squat bleached blonde woman in a pink mohair sweater rummaged in her car’s open trunk with one hand while her other held a straining leash clipped to the collar of a yippy terrier. The dog’s and the bleached blonde’s pink sweaters matched.

A young guy wearing a padded black costume, hip or horror, Condor couldn’t tell, carried a brown paper sack as he walked toward the facility’s rear and waiting green dumpsters below circling seagulls, plus the entrance to the Northbound road, the direction a mouse named Stuart Little took looking for love and a life to call his own.

A smiling family of Japanese tourists clustered together in the parking lot for pictures one of them took with a cell phone.

Call him twenty-four looking nineteen, baseball cap on backwards, gray sweatshirt, low slung blue jeans, sneakers shuffling toward the facility.

Two men in suits parked their dark-colored car.

A married couple who’d seen fifty in their rearview mirrors stepped out of their parked Chevy, slammed its doors and sighed as they shuffled in to use the bathrooms.

My next is now, thought Condor.

Brian said: “Let’s get something before.”

“Before what?” said Condor as his escorts walked him toward the facility.

Doug said: “Before your transfer ride shows up. Should have been here already.”

“What about you guys?”

“Places to go,” said Brian, “people to see.”

“Is this the time you’re going to do more than just see?” said Doug.

“Shut the fuck up,” said his partner. Lovingly.

Three soda machines selling bottles and cans of caffeine & sugar & chemical concoctions stood sentinel near the ramp Condor and his escorts took to the glass front doors, past a bench where three probably just graduated high school girls sat, two of them wearing hajib headresses, all of them smoking cigarettes.

What struck Condor inside the rest stop facility was its atmosphere of closeness, of containment. The densely packed air smelled of…

Of floor tiles. Crackling meat grease. Hot sugar. Lemon scented ammonia.

Ahead gaped entrances for MENS and LADIES rooms. The wall between the restrooms held a YOU ARE HERE map and a bronze plaque with lines of writing that travellers hurrying into the bathrooms only glanced at but Condor read:

Off to Condor’s left waited the gift shop, wall racks of celebrity magazines and candy, glass coolers with yet more cans of syrupy caffeine, displays of key chains dangling green plastic models of the Statue of Liberty, T-shirts and buttons that “hearted” New York, postcards that nobody mailed anymore.

He turned right, toward the food court, a long open corridor with garish neon signs above each stop where money could be exchange for sustenance.

There was ‘bucks, the coffee-centered franchise intent on conquering the world.

DANDY DONUTS! came next in line, sold coffee, too, essentially the same concoctions as ‘bucks but somehow not as costly.

The red, white & green logo for SACCO’S ITALIA seen mostly in airports, train stations or rest stops centered the food stops wall.

Italian green gave way to broccoli green letters on a white background: NATURAL EATS & FRO YO, where display cases held plastic sealed salads and silver machines hummed behind the counter.

Last in the line of eateries came BURGERS BONAZA, the third biggest chain of hamburger and fries and cola drive-ins of Condor’s youth, still clinging to that national sales rank partially because a dozen years remained on the company’s 50 year exclusive lease for this state’s Turnpike stops signed with an unindicted former governor.

“Come on,” Brian told Condor.

Gray tables lined the red tiles between the wall of eateries and the not quite ceiling-to-floor windows. Travellers sat on hard-to-shoplift black metal chairs.

Brian took a chair facing those front windows. Condor sat where he could look down the food court to the main doors, or look left out to the front parking lot through the wall of windows, or look right and see Doug shuffling in service lines. Behind Condor, a door labeled OFFICE waited near a glass door under a red sign glowing FIRE EXIT.

“What time is it?” asked Condor.

“No worries,” said Brian. “We’re where we belong and when we should be.”

Doug came to them balancing cardboard trays like a man who’d worked his way through college as a waiter. The trays held ‘bucks cups, plastic glasses of white yogurt and strawberry chunks, containers of raisins and granola, bananas, spoons, napkins, a white plastic knife almost useless for cutting someone’s throat.

“And six donuts?” said Brian.

“The secret to life is knowing how to mix and match,” said his partner. “Evens out health-wise with the yogurt. Gives us some bulk and energy for the ride back. Three classic chocolate donuts, three seasonal special pumpkin maple donuts. In good conscience, how could we pass those up?”

“You guys are driving back to Maine?” said Condor.

“Brooklyn,” said Brian as he sliced a banana into his yogurt.

“Somebody’s insisting on an overnight there,” explained his partner.

Two kindergarten aged boys ran past the table trailed by their harried mother.

“You wouldn’t believe Brooklyn now,” Brian told Condor.

“I didn’t believe it then.”

Doug said: “There’s this ultra-hip coffee shop not far from—”

“Hey!” said his partner.

“Come on,” Doug told his partner. “You can’t just show up hoping she will.”

The silver-haired man who was old enough to be the two gunners’ father smiled.

Said: “We’ve all done that.”

“What’s the worst that could happen if you finally talked to her?” said Doug.

Condor shrugged. “You could watch your dreams die in her eyes.”

“Me,” said Doug, “I was gonna say alimony, but troop, if you do not engage the enemy, you create no chance of success.”

His partner whispered: “Who’s the enemy?”

“Ourselves,” said Condor.

Brian blinked at the silver-haired legend. “My man: Welcome back!”

Condor ate his pumpkin maple donut as he stared out the window at travelers walking to and from their steel rides. Saw the guy dressed in padded black close the door on…yes, it was an old black hearse, walking away carrying a gym bag toward the south end of the rest stop and the rows of gas pumps controlled by attendants whose jobs were protected by state law. A yellow rental truck drove through Condor’s view.

Buzz went cell phones in his escorts’ pockets.

Doug read the text message, said: “Link-up ETA twelve minutes.”

Seven minutes later, these three men were at the facility’s main doors, Doug going through first, Brian posting drag, and Condor—

Flash!

From a cell phone held by a curly-haired woman on the other side of a glass door from Condor: blurry picture at best, and sure, she appeared innocently overwhelmed by carrying her purse and a takeout tray with two coffees, probably just clumsy fingers on her device, plus she didn’t seem to notice that Brian followed her to her car, cell phoned photos of her and her license plate and her driver who stereotyped husband as they drove to the Southbound exit just ahead of a rusty black hearse, while hundreds of miles away near Washington, D.C., their metrics became an I&M (Investigate & Monitor) upload.

Doug and Condor posted near the parked van.

Forty feet away, an easy (for him) pistol shot, Brian drifted amidst parked cars.

Zen. They were here. They were now. Not waiting: being, doing. Ready for.

The red car drove around the dragon facility from the Northbound entrance. A Japanese brand built in Tennessee that glided ever closer to two men standing by a gray van near the white gazebo.

Where the red car parked.

She opened the driver’s door. Let them see no one rode with her (unless they were laying on the back seat floor or huddled in the trunk). Kept her hands in sight as she walked toward them and yes, it was only a cell phone in her left hand.

Statistically, most people shoot right handed.

“Hey,” she said: “Aren’t you friends of Gary Pettigrew?”

“Don’t know the guy,” answered Doug. Said guy and not him or man.

“So where you from?”

“Where we’re going,” answered Doug, sounding ordinary enough for any eavesdropper (none around) but not a likely response from a random stranger.

“Then I’m in the right place.” She grinned. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”

Her left hand showed them the package’s picture in her cell phone.

“You must be Condor,” she said, extending her right hand to shake his.

“Vin,” corrected Doug. “But yeah.”

She was young. Short black hair. Clean caramel complexion and bright ebony eyes. Dark slacks and a white blouse under an unbuttoned navy blue jacket.

Said: “Want to see my credentials?”

“If you’re bogus and got the recognition code, you’ll pack fake flash,” said Doug.

“Damn it! I’ve been dying for a chance to whip out my I.D.: Homeland Security, up against the wall!”

“Rookie,” said Doug.

“Who else would get stuck with a one day road trip up to here and back to D.C.?”

Her voice stayed easy. “I’m Malati Chavali, and is that guy walking this way one of us?”

Doug smiled: “Yeah, Rook’, he’s with us.”

Brian drifted to her red car, glanced in the back seat, turned and said like that was the reason for his detour: “Where do you want his two bags?”

“What do you think?” she said to Doug — looked at Condor. “I’m sorry! I should ask you, it’s not like you’re…”

“Just a package?” said the man who could technically maybe be her grandfather.

“And you want me to call you Vin, right?”

He shrugged. “Mission requirements.”

“Speaking of,” said Brian. “We gotta hit the road.”

“Brooklyn calls,” joked his partner.

Condor’s suitcases went in the red car’s trunk.

He and its driver Malati watched the gray van pull out of its parking space and drive onto the Northbound ramp…gone.

“Can I ask you a favor?” she said to the sliver haired man as they stood in the cool morning air. “I know you’re probably anxious to get to your new apartment — row house, actually, on Capital Hill — your Settlement Specialist will meet us there, we’ll call her when we hit the Beltway and…The thing is, I’m dying for coffee.”

“Wouldn’t want you to die,” said Condor. “How would I get where I’m going?”

“There is that,” she said.

They walked toward the rest stop’s facility.

“Before we get where there are ears,” he said as they moved between parked cars lined in rows of shiny steel, “you’re Home Sec’, not CIA?”

“Actually, detailed to the National Resources Operations Division of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — there’s CIA on staff there, too, but me…Yeah, I’m in Home Sec’. For now. Grad school at Georgetown—”

“Don’t vomit your whole cover story first chance you get,” said the silver-haired man as they neared the main doors. “Even if it’s true. Maybe especially if it’s true.”

Laughing coworkers in Groucho Marx glasses strode past them.

Malati whispered: “Sorry.”

He held the building door for gave her. “Shit happens. So far, ours works.”

She smiled thank you as she stepped past that older gentleman.

Heard him say: “Should you have let me behind you?”

A chill claimed her amidst the thick air inside the rest stop facility.

She answered: “I don’t know.”

Condor shrugged. “Too late to think about it now.

“I’m going in there,” he said, pointing to the MENS room. “Get your coffee and we’ll meet at a table.”

“I thought I was in charge.”

“Good,” he said. Walked into the bathroom, left her standing there. Alone.

Five minutes later, he spotted her sitting at a table in the food court facing the restrooms, the gift shop and the main doors. Tactically acceptable. The wall of eateries waited to her right, the windows to the parking lot on her heartside. Her eyes locked on him as he walked toward where she sat with two cups from ‘bucks on the table.

“Please,” she said, “sit. We’ve got time.”

“You sure?”

“No. But we can make it work.”

He settled on the black steel chair facing her.

“Look around,” she said. “Most people are tuned out. Plugged into their cells or tablets. Not really here. Plus there’s nobody behind me, right? Nobody behind you. Nobody close enough to hear even if we’re not careful what we say.”

He gave her a nod and the smile that wanted to come.

“I’d like to start over,” she said. “The coffee’s a peace offering.”

“OK. We’re probably going to have to stop at least once before D.C. anyway.”

“When you want, when we can.” She took a sip from her cup, left no lip stain.

Don’t think about red lipstick. Gone. That’s the forever. This is now.

Malati said: “Somehow now I don’t think you’re just, say, a former asset or KGB defector who’s been in a retirement program and needs routine relocation.”

“What do you know?”

“The codename I’m now not supposed to use.” Malati shrugged. “Vin. Weird first name, but whatever, Vin: I volunteered for this nobody wanted it gig. Extra duty. Trying to prove I’m competent, trustable, a team player with initiative.”

“What do you want?” he said.

“To do more than earn a paycheck. Serve my country. Do some good.”

“And under that essay answer?”

“I don’t want to be somebody who doesn’t know what’s really going on.”

“Reality,” he said: “I’ve heard of that.”

He sipped his coffee. She’d gotten black and a couple to-go creamers so he could decide. He popped the lid off the cup, poured in cream, thought: Why not?

“Yesterday, our bosses decided I was no longer crazy.

“Or,” he added, “at least not so crazy that I couldn’t be released to a kind of free.”

Though most people would have seen nothing, Condor sensed her tense up, but she sat there and took it.

Malati said: “Are you?”

“Not so crazy or kind of free?”

“It’s your answer.”

And that made him like her. Told him she might be worth it.

“Guess we’ll see,” he said. “You’re my driver.”

“Just for this road trip.” She blurted: “I want to learn.”

Motion outside pulled his eyes from her to look out the window.

A school bus: classic yellow, slowing down out front. The school bus seemed to wobble, stopped haphazardly near the rows of citizens’ parked vehicles.

He nodded toward the school bus. “Did you ever ride one of those?”

“I’m not supposed to vomit my cover story. Even if it’s true.”

“Lesson one,” he told her. “Give trust to get trust.”

“That’s not my first lesson from you.” That acknowledgment made him like her even more as she added: “Yeah, I did bus time in Kansas City.”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” he quoted.

“Hey!” she said. “We’re talking Kansas City, Missouri. Whole different place.”

They laughed together and as she relaxed into this is where I’m from stories, he looked around at where they were.

Sitting at a table by himself was a forty-ish man munching a morning cheeseburger, tie loosened over a cheap shirt already straining against too many such meals, a franchise manager who couldn’t figure out why his boss hated him. Two tables away sat a thirty-ish mom leaning her forehead into one hand while the other held the cell phone against her ear for the report from the school on her daughter who’d been the teenage pregnancy that ended getting out of what was now both their hometown. Two male medical techs in green scrubs munched on fried chicken, one was white, one was black, neither wanted to get back to the hospital where they could only give morphine and more bills to a cancer warrior. There sat a down vest over a white sweater blonde beauty, like, OMG machinegun texting her cell phone and being super careful to not say she was scared to death because she had no clue about what came after nineteen. The gray-haired couple barely older than Condor sat staring everywhere but at each other and seeing nowhere better they could go. The two years out of college man who worked the night shift at a factory job one level above the summer work he’d done to help him pay for school sat drinking Diet Coke against the yawns, dreading tomorrow with its first of the month loan bills coming to the clapboard house where he lived in the basement below his working parents who loved him so much. Like Malati noted, many of the road-dazed travelers seemed hypnotized by screens.

We’re all packages transporting from some there to another where.

And yet, thought Condor, we find the hope or the dreams or the responsibility, the dignity and courage to push ourselves away from the tables at this nowhere transit zone, get up, get up again, go outside, get in our cars and go, go on, get to where we can, tears yes, but laughter at it all and at ourselves, because if nothing else, this is the ride we got and we refuse to just surrender.

The Nick Logar Rest Stop.

These are the highways of our lives.

“…so my parents wanted me to go into business, but,” Malati shrugged, “profit doesn’t turn me on as much as purpose.”

Children. Chattering. Squealing. Half a dozen of them running through the main doors TO THE BATHROOMS! ahead of a woman teacher shouting: “Stay together!”

Condor and Malati looked out the window.

Saw a straggling line of second graders, marching across the parking lot from the school bus. Some kids wore Halloween glory — a witch, a fairy tale princess, a ghost, a cowboy, Saturday morning cartoon costumes. All the kids carried an orange “Trick or Treat!” plastic bucket in the shape of a pumpkin stenciled with black eyes, a toothy grin and a corporate logo from the chain drugstore that accidentally ordered too many of the buckets to sell but cleverly recouped a tax donation to their local elementary school. As the children marched, those pumpkin heads swung wildly on wire loop handles gripped in their tiny hands.

“Time for us to go,” said Condor.

Didn’t matter who was in charge, they both knew he was right.

At the main entrance, Condor—no: Vin, his name is Vin—the package brushed her out of the way as he held a door for a man not much older than Malati, a guy in a wheelchair who was rolling himself up the ramp, a Philly vet named Warren Iverson who wore his Army jacket from the 10th Mountain Division and a smile on his boyish face.

Malati realized Vin didn’t just notice the vet with wasted legs, Vin saw him.

Said: “Better hurry, man. A stampede of short stuffs is coming up behind you.”

“Always.” Warren rolled past the silver-haired man in a black leather jacket.

Malati leaned close to Vin as they stepped outside and aside to let the parade of costumed kids squeal their way into this wondrous rest stop oasis.

She whispered: “You keep doing stuff like that, you’ll ruin your tough guy act.”

“Be your cover,” Vin told her. “Besides, looks like he’s one of the men and women who pay when we fuck up our job. Or some politician fucks it up for us.”

He shrugged.

“Do what should be done, nothing special about that,” he told her sounding so much like her father.

But only he heard the beep…beep…beep of machines webbed to a hospital bed as he said: “Probably I owe guys like him something beyond coulda and shoulda.”

She understood what he said but not what he meant.

Just walk beside him. Figure out what you can.

“My car’s still there,” she said as they started down one ramp to the parking lot.

The red Japanese motion machine, squatting way over by the north border fence and the white gazebo where exiting the Turnpike Southbound came a black hearse.

The black hearse parked in a row of cars near Malati’s red ride. As the hearse glided to a stop, Condor envisioned the YOU ARE HERE map mounted on the wall between the bathrooms. Nick Logar was one of the few rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike that serviced traffic going both directions. The padded black-clad driver got out of the hearse, opened its back door. If he’d forgotten something at this rest stop from when he left earlier behind the Southbound suspect cell phone photo couple, Mr. Black Costume would have had to drive about ten miles before he could exit, get back on the Turnpike north, then drive here, but…But then he would have needed to drive past this place or through it, go further north to another exit turnaround, again maybe ten miles away in order to come back and exit southbound back into the rest stop, into here.

Why make that long circle drive?

What’s that sound? thought Condor as he and Malati neared the bottom of the ramp to the parking lot where two burly men stood with unlit cigarettes dangling from their lips. The man wearing the COUNTY SCHOOLS windbreaker pulled a silver lighter from his left front shirt pocket, clicked it open and thumbed its wheel to summon a flame and ignite the white papered cancer sticks, barely a pause as that bus driver said:

“Couldn’t believe it, twenty minutes from the school if the traffic held, sure as shit ain’t holding now, shut down and backed up behind me, so I got off lucky, whump, ‘bus starts to shake, what the fuck, get it to this exit and wrestle it down over there, at least get the kids where they can pee, but my tires got four little black steel like…like stars or some other pointy things, and with three flats, we barely made it here.”

Malati felt Vin drift her away from her waiting car, into the front parking lot.

“Listen!” he said. Made them stop and stand still, absolutely still.

“To what?”

“There’s no whooshing.”

He faced the unseen empty lanes of the expressway going south, turned to look past the hulk of the rest stop facility to the unseen empty expressway lanes going north.

Heard that silence.

Felt his own thundering heart.

From deep inside Malati came the whisper: “We’ve got to go now.”

They looked across rows of parked vehicles toward her distant red car.

Saw ordinary human beings, everyday people strolling to and fro, the guy in black walking toward the facility from the hearse. A honeymoon couple laughed.

The new husband aimed his cell phone camera.

The happy bride raised her face to the open sky.

Like a red mist flowered her skull as she flipped to the parking lot pavement.

The husband almost dropped his cell phone before a crimson fountain from his spine burst out of his blue-shirted chest.

Time became a child’s clear marble dropped into a swimming pool…

…to slowly sink.

Not seeing what I’m seeing! Malati’s mind registered her package, her responsibility, her…Condor call him Vin: he lunged before the second shot’s Crack!

What she saw over rows of parked cars at an ordinary New Jersey Turnpike rest stop on an ordinary autumn Halloween was the not-so-far-away guy in black.

What she saw was that ordinary American boy face behind an assault rifle.

A gorilla roared from where the bus driver and the salesman were smoking.

The gunman sprayed bullets at what he heard.

The salesman and bus driver dropped twitching, bleeding, moaning, dying near the concrete ramp to where the children were.

Condor pulled the young fed’ down between two parked cars.

Yelled: “Can you get a good shot?”

“I don’t have a gun! I’m not that kind of spy! And you’re a crazy old man!”

Machinegun fire. Screams.

“Fucking Brooklyn.” Condor waved her between two cars, stayed low as he scrambled two more cars over, eased his head above the hood of steel shelter.

The shooter looked like the robot of death. Padding under his black shirt and pants: Had to be ballistic armor. Working the assault rifle, thumbing the release to drop the spent magazine to the parking lot pavement, reaching in a pouch to pull out an expanded capacity mag’ and slap it home: that movie star reload let Condor see a combat pump shotgun strapped across the robot’s chest.

The robot stalked toward where Condor and Malati hid.

Gotchya! whirled the other way to rat-a-tat-tat a line of bullet holes through the food court’s wall of windows. Condor spotted a pistol SWAT-style strapped to the shooter’s right leg, a combat knife sheathed on his left ankle, strapped-on pouches. Is that a computer tablet dangling from his belt?

Condor dropped between the cars.

Malati said: “What’s he doing?”

“Killing people.”

“Why?”

“Because he can.”

The machinegun buzzed like a monster’s vibrating tongue.

“Did you see his hearse?” said Condor.

Malati started to rise—

Got jerked down. “You don’t know where he’s looking! You got no diversion!”

She shuddered in his grasp.

Condor said: “Shiny metal where the coffin should ride. ‘Think they’re bins.”

“Bins?”

“The bus driver pulled black steel stars out of his tires. Caltrops. Tactical steel road tire spikes. State troopers and Army ambushers scatter them on the highway.”

Somewhere in the parking lot a woman screamed like a fleeing banshee.

Malati shook her head. “What does that have to do with bins and where would—”

The machinegun roared.

No more banshee screaming.

“Maybe he got the spikes on Amazon,” said Condor. “Get lots, rig metal bins in the coffin space. Cut holes in the back of the hearse, driver-controllable lids on the bins. He drove every stretch of road every direction out of here, probably weaving lane to lane to cover all drivable asphalt, picking his release spots just past or just before the rest stop exits and entrances, dropping, what, couple thousand of those things. A few flat tires, cars crashing into each other, stopped, and it’s the mother of all backups every way in or out of here, walls of steel. He’s isolated his kill zone. Stalled any rescue or escape.”

BOOM! The robot switched to his shotgun.

Malati waved her arm: “When he’s shooting the other way we can make it across the parking lot toward the Turnpike! Short fence, hop it, run, hide—”

She saw where Condor was looking.

The empty school bus.

She said: “All those kids.”

He said: “All us everybody.”

Machinegun bullets cut a line over their heads like the contrail of a jet on its way across this cool blue sky.

Her spine tensed. Her mind pushed against her forehead.

He said: “Cell phone!”

Pressed against her ear. “911 is…Due to a high volume—”

“Half the people here. Unless he’s got a jammer.”

“You can buy those?”

“You tell me, you’re the one from the real world.”

Car windows shatter. Bullets whine.

Why now? Why here? Why me?

Why not.

Her eyes were welded wide. “Where is he? Is he coming — Wait!”

Malati swooped the screen of her cell phone. Eased her cell above the car.

Camera app, the phone like a periscope lens scanning the sounds of gunfire.

Like a movie.

“He’s moving toward the main doors!”

Standing tall, man, striding toward the funnel for the fools—Whoops: fat guy in parking lot, where’d he pop up from, pulling at the passenger door on that green car bullets’ burst and he’s dancing and spraying red and sliding down to dead, motherfucker.

The side fire door of the rest stop facility flies open.

Half a dozen people charge out.

Crying tires as a silver SUV lunges out of its parking lot space.

Malati’s cell phone showed the shooter drop flat on the pavement.

He fumbled with the book-sized computer thing lashed to his belt.

Silver SUV slows for six people running to its—

FLASH! by the green dumpsters then came the BOOM! of garage-mixed explosive gel shelled by ball bearings and old nails as the paper sack bomb exploded.

Take that, Columbine motherfuckers! The shooter keyboarded the tablet lashed to his waist so it was re-primed to send a wireless signal to any of his other planted bombs.

Windshield blasted glass slivers blinded the silver SUV’s driver, an engaged office manager/volunteer at a Paterson, N.J. soup kitchen.

Bomb shrapnel hit three of the runners, bodies crashed to the pavement. The other three runners staggered—arm, the blast blew off the arm of a mother of two lawyer on her way to a deposition, she crumpled, bled out.

Like a cat person on TV, the shooter rocketed off the pavement.

Saw two targets staggering beside a drifting silver SUV.

Sprayed them with bullets. Nailed one, the other, ah fuck him, let him stagger away, maybe he’s hit, certain he’s damaged.

The shooter tossed something like a rock toward the FIRE EXIT side of the facility.

Pop! Purple smoke grenade, rescue me surplus, that store off the Interstate.

“The grenade’s to scare us,” said Condor. “Keep the people inside.”

Death’s robot faced the stairs and ramps up to the main doors.

Malati stared at the huddled-beside-her silver-haired man in the black jacket who knew, who had to know: “What are we going to do?”

“Be crazier.”

“’Easy for you to say.”

The robot of death. At the bottom of the ramp where the bus driver sprawled over another smoker’s corpse.

Marching out of the main doors: Two women. Teachers. Marching down the ramp straight toward the shooter. Commanding: “Stop! Stop this!”

Behind them, running down the other concrete ramp:

Kids, scared, crying, stumbling down to the parking lot as the young man from Teach For America and some other citizen urge the twenty-one children forward, go, run, run!

The main doors whir open.

Out rolls Warren.

Wheelchair. Army jacket. Fuck you face.

Ready to charge. Ready to be diversion. Ready to take it to you, motherfucker.

Keep going kids! Run, run!

The shooter’s stopped. Standing still. Assault rifle hanging on its sling.

Two teachers close on him, the maybe maybe prayer on their faces.

The robot drew his handgun Bam! Bam-Bam!

Schoolteachers collapsed in a heap atop a bus driver.

Tidy you want me to be tidy you want tidy I give you tidy!

Warren yelled and spun himself charge onto the ramp.

Bam! A third eye blasted into Warren.

The shooter aimed two-handed toward the main doors where Teach For America and some other guy lined up in the V front sight of a 15-shots semi-automatic pistol.

Count five blasted rounds into those two bodies, dropped them in a pile, tidy.

Wheelchair, carrying dead Warren, obeying inertia, rolling down the ramp—

Stopped as the shooter slammed his gun bore on the ribs under the Army jacket.

Why waste a bullet on this Army jacket guy with a red mush forehead?

He shoved the wheelchair. His force sent it freewheeling up to the flat landing outside the main doors. The burdened wheelchair spun sideways, stopped.

As twenty-one children stampede amidst parked cars.

The assault rifle sprayed zinging lead toward them.

But kids are short.

Bullets crashed through cars’ windows, punched into steel chassis.

The shooter dropped to the ground.

Stared under rows of parked cars. Undercarriages of mufflers and pipes. Tires propped the cars at least six inches off the pavement and made a slit of scenery.

There, ‘few rows away: running children’s legs and feet.

The assault rifle fired a long sweep of bullets under the cars.

Zing ripped out from the under the metal that hid Condor and Malati, cut right between where they were crouched, right past the knocked-over ‘bucks cup she’d only God knows why just let go of. Slugs slammed into another parked car, punched a hole in one door and out the other. A tire blew. Bullets ricocheted off parking lot asphalt.

Is that smell—

Two kids. Frozen in the lane between parked cars. Bullets zinged past their legs — one wore brown cords his mom picked out, one wore her favorite blue jeans.

The girl pushed her classmate away from the shooter: “Split up!”

She turned to run the other way than the boy so the bad guy couldn’t—

Saw two crouching-down adults waving their hands.

Ran between the cars, into the arms of the Grampa guy.

“Got you!” he said as she burrowed her face into his leather jacket.

No wet no red she’s not shot. Condor saw a Halloween pumpkin bucket looped through the belt on her blue jeans, a red jacket, white blouse. “It’s not a dorky costume!” she’d insisted that morning as she did what she was ‘posed to and ate her scrambled eggies: “It’s the idea of the flag and it’s ’posed to make you think!” But that glitter on her seven-year-old face? That, she said, “that’s me.” Didn’t notice her mother not cry.

Machinegun roars sliced the air.

The second grader looked back to where she’d been.

Whispered: “Run, Johnny.”

The shooter slapped fresh ammo into the assault rifle. Seen it. He’d seen running snot nose kids scramble onto the shutdown school bus across the parking lot. You can’t hide from me. He machine-gunned the bus. Bullets banged through the yellow metal.

Malati held her cell phone above their parked cars cover.

“He’s turning toward — I think he’s going to go into the building, the food court!”

Risk it: Condor peeked over the car. Saw the black robot at the facility’s main doors. Saw the dead vet in his wheelchair. Saw bodies heaped at the bottom of the ramp: bus driver who smoked, women. Saw the food court’s bullet-holed tinted dark windows.

He glared at the little girl with the big brown eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Phyllis Azar seven years old live at—”

Create focus.

“You’re here. Now. With us.”

The seven-year-old girl nodded: The silver-haired guy sounded like a principal!

Empower your asset to gain their trust.

Condor said: “What do you want me to call you?”

Bam! Bam! Bam! Paced steady rhythm shots hit the building.

Suppression fire as the black clad shooter neared the main doors.

“Daddy calls me Punkin.” She shrugged at the orange plastic pumpkin bucket she’d looped to herself with her belt special so no way would she lose it.

“Punkin, I’m—Condor, Vin, doesn’t matter, she’s Malati.”

A bullet ricocheted off a car roof.

Punkin said: “We going to be OK?”

The big girl woman nodded yes as Mr. Silver Hair said: “We might get hurt.”

“Might get dead.” Punkin shook her head. “That would suck.”

Malati watched her cell phone: “He’s standing at the main doors!”

In the canyon of car metal next row over: a side mirror of an SUV dangled upside down, its cracked glass captured the reflection of a trapped man, woman, child.

Malati inhaled that sight of yesterday, today, tomorrow.

“Condor!” yelled Malati: “Smell that oh my God! Why didn’t it it’s going to—”

Like a piano chord exploded the meds’ weight on his mind.

A lightning flash of seeing.

He grabbed the belt around the little girl NEVER NOBODY ‘POSED TO and he’s jerking it undone saying: “’Fifty-fifty shot at next to no chance in Hell and Punkin!”

She locked on him as he said: “We got one chance to save anybody!”

Punkin gave him a nod from her bones.

“But you gotta do one thing you’re not ’posed to.”

Punkin didn’t blink.

Condor told her: “You have to say a bad word.”

The shooter paused outside the main doors. To his left were a heap of bodies he’d dropped with his pistol—good fucking shots. Behind him near the top of the ramp was the listless wheelchair full of some dead older guy wearing an Army jacket.

Crucial question: Which gun?

Level up cool. Now it’s your game.

Nothing like a shotgun for close quarters tactical situations.

He let the black military-cool rifle dangle on its sling, wrapped his right hand around the pistol-grip of the black steel and plastic Italian-made shotgun manufactured after America’s 1994 assault weapons ban expired.

And just for a moment, felt regret.

While he loved the high-tech look of his semi-automatic 12 gauge that fed new shells into the chamber after each shot, the ratchet-clack of pumping a fresh shell into an old-school “regular” shotgun was epic. But besides slowing his rate of fire, a pump shotgun made him clumsy, so as much as he appreciated cool, he knew he’d been smart to go semi-auto, out with the old, in with new. Right tool, right job.

Like he expected, he saw no one standing beyond the closed glass doors.

There’s the wall with doors to the bathrooms. There’s that stupid plaque.

‘Good as Bruce Lee, he stomped his discount store black sneaker out to his side, a kick that smacked the circular aluminum door opener pressure plate and like the yawn this place was — used to be, had been until me—the doors gaped open for him.

My turn.

He slid through the open doors like ninja. Blasted buckshot into the Gift Shop where the old Korean lady behind the counter, yeah, she’d ducked somewhere already. Stay down, Honey, I’ll be back. Pirouetted a slo-mo circle until the food court filled his vision BOOM! Buckshot tore through air that smelled like coffee and burnt hamburgers. Like in Slaughter Soldier 2 for Xbox, he grabbed a grenade from the pouch on his hip, pulled the pin with his teeth and made a left handed throw, landed it on the tiles by the health food rip-off place BOOM! Purple smoke mushroomed through the food court.

Hope it won’t hide too much from security cameras mounted in the ceiling.

He combat jumped into the MENS room — looked empty, closed aluminum stalls.

Can’t fool me with that shit. He switched the shotgun for his pistol, punched two bullets through the wall of the nearest stall.

A man screamed and fell off the toilet where he’d been crouched.

WOMENS room. Suburban mom sobbing and pleading, holding up her hands.

Mom got shot right through her palm in front of her crybaby face.

From the entrance to the food court he surveyed his kingdom of Hell.

Purple smoke thicker at the far end where red letters glowed EXIT and that was a lie, nowhere to go, suckers. BOOM he shot that cloud. Some guy charged him throwing coins, made the shooter flinch BOOM cut down that coin-thrower with a shotgun blast that also shattered a window facing the front parking lot.

Crashing glass: he liked the sound so much he blasted out three more windows.

Cool air and sunlight streamed into the purple-smoked debris of the food court.

He wondered who’d discovered that he’d chained the rear doors shut.

Ringing: a smoke detector in BURGER BONAZA as the meat abandoned on the hot grill crackled out black smoke. Theme music as he surveyed the food court.

Moms draped over their kids. Travelers cowered behind metal tables. Dead guy on the floor — must be a bonus score from the first burst sent through the windows. Pools and dribbles of darkness on the red floor tiles, blood from somebody who’d crawled or been carried away, he’d find them in good time.

For a moment he thought about swinging up his wireless tablet to set off the other bombs he’d planted by the roads in and out of this rest stop so he could watch the judging-eyes people in here scramble and scream and break cover trying to escape.

Naw, stick to the plan.

Save the bombs for the wanna-be heroes, cops and firemen who figure a way around the traffic back ups and road spikes for their red lights and sirens.

You gotta do the walk, man.

He switched from the could-be-empty shotgun — in all the excitement, he kind of lost count of his shots. Slapped a fresh magazine into the assault rifle.

Stepped out among them, knowing their desperate hopes that he was looking for someone in particular, specific, for somebody who was the why, for someone not me.

Everybody thinking: I don’t deserve this!

Walk your purple smoke ringing glory and what do you see.

A cash flow corridor of factory food for cubicle fools awaiting coffins.

TVs by the ceiling show talking heads who never say your name.

A lotto screen displays winning numbers for luck you never get.

An ATM machine holds money it won’t ever give you.

Two guys hide behind a condiments counter, not so high school cool now.

Bald guy, white shirt, tie, nametag, hands in the air, so who’s the boss?

College girl, on the floor like a dog, yeah, what do you got to say now, bitch?

Black leather biker with a gut wound by the wall, who’s scared today?

Somebody praying to the big empty that never cares.

So who gets to play this next round of—

“YOU’RE A BIG BOOGER-HEAD!”

He heard it above the smoke detector ringing.

From outside. Through the shot-out windows. The parking lot. A…a kid.

“YOU’RE A SCARED MEANIE!”

Some little girl. Off the bus. Out there hiding amidst the parked cars.

“NOBODY WANTS TO FUCK YOU!”

The shooter cocked his head.

“NOBODY KNOWS WHO YOU ARE!”

He faced that new whine in his skull.

“YOU’RE A TEENY TINY NOBODY!”

Nothing. Just nothing. Just a snotty kid little bitch girl doesn’t know nothing.

“AND YOU’RE WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT FUCK IS!”

He squeezed a burst out the window toward that sound in the parking lot.

Food court fading echo of gunshots ringing smoke detector and STILL he heard:

“NA-NANA-NA-NA YOU CAN’T SHOOT NOTHING!”

The shooter thumbed his assault rifle to Select Fire.

Squeezed three shots in a sweep over the visible car roofs.

“YOU CAN’T GET ME!”

Not from in here.

The black robot whirled left, whirled right.

Fifty-fifty choice.

Either the side EXIT on the left and out alongside the building with its purple smoke cloud still so thick the scavenging seagulls floating overhead couldn’t see what they smelled sprawled on the black pavement.

Or back through the main doors to the flat cement slab entryway that would give him a 180 degree-plus field of fire from the purple smoked zone, up to the white gazebo, then the easy sweep all over the whole front parking lot, then toward the right to the distant gas pumps that were destined to be awesome pillars of fire.

Main doors.

He’s there. Elbows the shiny steel plate automatic door opener. Rifle up, alert position, gun butt by his shoulder. Just like SWAT guys on TV. Staring over the barrel. Focused. Sliding past the heap of dead men blocking his way down one ramp. Past the Army jacketed meat slumped in a wheelchair nearly blocking the stairs by the top of the second ramp where the shooter had pushed it.

Stairs are tricky while aiming over an assault rifle, so he SWAT glides down the second ramp to the heap of bodies, women on top fucking bitches.

“YOU CAN’T FUCK!”

Two quick shots at that in the parking lot sound.

The shooter lowered his rifle, the better to see.

Gunshots ringing in his ears, the ringing smoke detector back in the food court: he doesn’t hear the whirr of rubber tires on cement as coming behind him, the wheelchair bearing Army-jacketed meat rolls rushes down the ramp.

Splashing hits his left side and back, head, stings his eyes. That splash hit him from off the ground and the heap of dead women.

Stinks, what—

SMACKED in his face with an empty plastic orange bucket pumpkin.

Eyes burning, the blur of some woman swinging a pumpkin to hit him again/feint, he knew that was a feint, blocked her true attack kick with the assault rifle and knocked her down Why do I smell? His gun barrel sought the her to kill.

In the shooter’s new behind him:

Warren’s blood smeared on his forehead.

Warren’s Army jacket worn for Trick Or Treat.

Condor launched himself from the rolling wheelchair.

Yelled so the shooter whirled.

Tossed the ‘bucks cup full of wet into the shooter’s face.

Tripped with inertia from his wheelchair leap.

Condor crashed to his knees, heard the falling on concrete of that cup.

That paper cup he’d stuck into the stream spewing out of the bullet-punctured steel tank under a car that sheltered him and Malati and a child who wanted to be called Punkin and nodded all the way down into her bones that she could she would she’d do what she had to do even if she wasn’t ‘posed to.

The ‘bucks cup he’d used to bail that spewing stream into Punkin’s pumpkin bucket. Bucket full, he filled the cup to carry with him. Crouched low so the robot shooting inside the rest stop facility couldn’t see him as like in some don’t spill Fourth of July picnic contest, he frog-ran to the level concrete right outside the main doors. Purple smoke mushroomed inside the food court. Condor set the cup down. Don’t spill! He pulled the Army jacket off Warren. Got his black leather jacket on the dead vet. Smeared blood from Warren’s third eye on his own forehead. Grunted the body onto the heap of corpses blocking the other ramp. Plunked himself into the wheelchair.

Malati, careful not to spill the liquid from the pumpkin she carried, fumbled where Condor’d told her, the throat-shot bus driver’s shirt pocket—Got it!

Tossed a tumbling glint of silver to the man in the wheelchair.

Malati draped herself over the murdered teachers.

Punkin yelled like she was ‘posed to.

Death stalked down the ramp.

Got ambush doused with gasoline.

That stinking wet killer jerked Condor off his knees.

Condor pushed the bus driver’s open silver cigarette lighter against the shooter and thumbed the wheel.

WHUMP! A fountain of fire engulfed the man who’d come to kill and die BUT NOT LIKE THIS!

Screaming. A human torch blazed the morning.

Dropped between the burning man’s wobbling feet, Condor jerked the combat knife from its ankle sheath — slammed the blade up into the crease of shooter’s groin.

Blood sprayed Condor, wiped on the Army jacket as he scrambled away.

The burning man staggered.

Collapsed in a flaming heap.

Sickening sweet stench of baking crackling flesh and gasoline.

Condor, hands and knees scrambling up the ramp past the overturned wheelchair to where his black leather jacket clad the body of Warren.

Helicopters.

Chopping the air, racing in low, fast and hard to kill or capture who’s crazy.

Whoever’s crazy.

“Remember,” the soldier who’d had a gun and was named Doug had said: “We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are.”

From his knees, Condor yelled: “Punkin!”

Trashed his way free of the bloody Army jacket.

“Punkin! All clear! FREE BIRD! FREE BIRD!”

There! Running toward the main entrance from between parked cars.

Her face not gonna cry and gonna run, run, RUN!

Condor—Vin, my name is Vin—wiped his face with Warren’s jacket, saw the smear of blood, hoped he looked close to whatever survivor’s normal was.

The seven-year-old girl with curly brown hair and red-white-and-blue clothes ran toward the silver-haired man who’d revolutionized her ’posed to’s.

Condor pulled his black leather jacket off Warren.

Maneuvered that dead vet’s arms and body enough so Warren wore the gas and blood-stained Army jacket he’d died in.

Shrugged himself into his own black leather jacket with its weight of legends.

Collided with and swept a little girl into his arms.

Swooping roar over them as helicopters flew a draw-fire pass.

Malati stumbled toward them.

The package, her responsibility, his arms wrapped tight around the don’t you dare call her a little girl, that silver-haired Condor told Malati: “You spy, you lie.”

Then he held the seven-year-old so they stared into each other’s eyes.

“Punkin, I’m so proud of you! You did it! You did everything right! You saved so many people and us, you saved you and me and Malati. You’re so great! But Punkin: there’s one more giant big ‘posed to.”

She nodded with all her heart.

“You can’t tell the whole truth. The real truth. You gotta tell the good truth. The guy who you helped, the man who saved you, the guy who got the gas from the shot-up car, rolled over there and did it, the guy who burned and stabbed the bad guy…

“It was him.” Condor nodded to Warren’s body. “The guy in the Army jacket. That’s the most anybody else probably saw. That’s all you say or tell anybody ever. He did it. Got the gas. Tossed it, lit the monster on fire. He rolled his wheelchair away to escape, that bad guy squeezed off a wild shot. Must have hit the Army jacket guy, you don’t know. You only know you made it and you did what you were ‘posed to.”

Every good lie needs a why.

“Punkin,” said the silver-haired man, “me, Malati, we’re spies. No matter what, we’ve got to be a super secret that nobody but you ever knows. You can only say that we were here with you. Just people who ran and hid and didn’t get shot. We’re all telling the same story with the true part being what you did. But with the wheelchair guy. You, her, me: we’re a cross our hearts forever secret.”

Punkin nodded her solemn vow.

Must stay secret spies in that rampage of her life made as much sense as anything else anyone ever told her.

She hurled herself back into Condor’s arms. He got held tight.

This, he prayed to the meds: Let me remember this, this.

Helicopters vibrated the world.

Burnt flesh stench. Shattered glass. Purple smoke swirls. Megaphone commands.

When the three of them sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the shot-to-shit rest stop, before she cell phoned the Panic Line and like a pro triggered the make sure it holds cover story of them as random survivors not identified in official police reports, named in newspapers or broadcast by television crews who showed up on their own helicopters while flying ambulances were ferrying out the sobbing wounded, before all that, her face pressed against asphalt, Malati whispered to the silver-haired man laying beside her:

“Is it always like this?”

And he said yes.